farmer, gardener or mechanic would send his 

 son to college to learn the very things which he 

 himself could teach with far less expense at 

 home. Nearly all the young men who seek ad- 

 mission to the Iowa Agricultural College bring 

 with them a complete experience in the ordi- 

 nary routine of farm labor. But the vast inter- 

 ests of agriculture are suffering not so much as 

 seems to me from the lack of skilled workmen 

 as from the lack of scientific knowledge. Even 

 if they were, it would be quite impossible for the 

 national schools to supply the deficiency. Its 

 province as defined by law is not to develop car- 

 penters, masons, plowmen and crop raisers 

 merely, but architects, engineers, scientific 

 breeders, veterinary surgeons, economic ento- 

 mologists and the like. In maturing his noble 

 scheme for the industrial schools, the f ramer of 

 the law which declares that the leading object 

 shall be to teach the industrial sciences, had a 

 clear and definite perception of the real obsta- 

 cles to the advancement of the great industries, 

 namely, a wide-spread ignorance of the branches 

 of learning that underlie them. He saw with 

 marvelous clearness of vision that the vast 

 treasures now sleeping in and beneath the soil 

 demand for their development the research, the 

 foresight and the facilities which the industrial 

 sciences can furnish. He saw that science alone 

 could protect the great staple productions of the 

 country from those natural enemies which con- 

 stantly threaten and often accomplish their de- 

 struction. He desired to bring learning forth 

 from its venerable haunts into the open air and 

 the broad sunlight where she may become sym- 

 pathetic and helpful to the industries, where 

 she may indeed reveal the secrets of nature, 

 teaching how lightning is utilized, how ores are 

 discovered, mined and reduced, how rivers are 

 bridged and mountains tunneled, how plants 

 grow, how marshes are drained and worn-out 

 soils refertilized, how fruits and cereals and do- 

 mestic animals may be improved, how every ar- 

 ticle of food and fabric may be produced with 

 the least possible waste of muscle and material; 

 in short where science may take the laborer by 

 the hand and lift him up with the loving injunc- 

 tion " I say unto thee arise." 



The sufferings and sacrifices endured in every 

 state from, a lack of that learning that underlies 

 the industries, made the necessity for such 

 schools the more apparent. In the very capitol 

 for instance, erected at the cost of millions, 

 where the bill for founding them was drawn, 

 many valuable lives have been lost through the 

 poisonous atmosphere of a defective ventilation. 

 Millions on millions of dollars are invested an- 

 nually in dwellings which are wanting in both 

 convenience and beauty by reason of the ab- 

 sence of architectural knowledge. Uncounted 

 sums go to waste in the erection of public 

 structures in which some fatal defect is due to a 

 blundering builder. Early errors of construc- 

 tion in the main building of the Iowa Agricult- 



ural College involved a loss of at least $50,000, 

 and a defective heating apparatus at least $25,- 

 000. Four years ago the rising walls of a new 

 oapitol, which the state had projected, were torn 

 down to the tune of $50,000, in order to remove 

 the crumbling stone which an incompetent ar- 

 chitect had placed therein. These instances are 

 only an insignificant fraction of the winumera- 

 ble legion of blunders which are born of inca- 

 pacity in every state. The vast aggregate of 

 treasures sunk in this way beyond hope of re- 

 covery defies enumeration. We can only touch 

 a sample or two and leave the stupendous whole 

 as beyond our grasp. A really competent archi- 

 tect would have saved to Iowa in the single in- 

 stance referred to more than a hundred thou- 

 sand dollars. How much would she save with a 

 complete supply of scientific master workmen 

 in every line of industrial art. 



But there is even a more urgent call for science 

 to give effective help in the various branches of 

 industrial art which agriculture embraces. For 

 a single example, all over the land there is a de- 

 plorable ignorance of the breeding and habits of 

 the commonest pests that infest the farm and 

 consume its products. It is high time that 

 science should seek every where to compass the 

 destruction of these noxious feeders. There is 

 urgent need for a general onslaught to be made 

 on the clouds of insects that season after season 

 make such alarming havoc with our crops of 

 fruit and grain. There is a need as urgent that 

 all quadrupeds and birds which are naturally de- 

 structive to these should be carefully multiplied. 

 With every returning summer comes the resur- 

 rection of the swarms of borers, curculios, 

 weevils, worms, grasshoppers and the like.which 

 combine in countless hosts to rob the farmer of 

 the products of his labor. Particular families of 

 these have generated with such alarming rapid- 

 ity as to beget a well grounded fear that their 

 numbers will result in the utter annihilation of 

 the crops on which they feed. In some quarters 

 this fear has long since been realized. The lo- 

 cust, once valued for its enduring wood and 

 grateful shade, has yielded to millions of perfo- 

 rations which have reduced its limbs and trunk 

 to dust. The plum tree, which once offered its 

 sure fruits, round, ripe and melting, now, in 

 many a section, casts them annually to the 

 ground, blighted and worthless. In 'all manner 

 of vegetable delicacies the worm is demanding 

 to be served first. The time may come when no 

 man can taste an apple whose skin unflecked 

 and unstung shall forbid the apprehension that 

 the first incision of the teeth shall reveal a slimy 

 occupant. But most terrible of all and without 

 remedy as yet from science and skill is the 

 scourge that hides the sun and blackens the sky 

 and wherever it alights turns the beauty and 

 the bloom of the fields into the barrenness of 

 the desert. 



These various destroyers, threatening such 

 wide-spread evils, demand the wisest and moat 



